Vacationing in a Middle Europe Fantasia: Inside Austria's Hidden Tyrol Region
From alpine highways to nude saunas, a few of my favorite things.
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I never wanted to visit Austria. It has the unfortunate distinction of being geographically squeezed between sexier-sounding countries: Italy, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany. Austria seemed a mere transit stop on the European merry-go-round, a plane transfer on the way to grander pastures. Travel guides describe the country as "idyllic," which is not really my thing. I was happily resigned to never visiting the serene setting for The Sound of Music, Christmas markets selling glühwein and rustic restaurants proudly serving veal schnitzels. Then, last summer, my sister and her family moved to Innsbruck, the capital of the Austrian Tyrol region, which as far I was concerned, is in the middle of nowhere.
There are no direct planes from NYC to Innsbruck (strike 1). You have to either fly to Vienna and wait for a long transfer to the tiny Innsbruck airport where the traffic is super slow because it is a Category C airport. Such airports require specialized pilot training because of the poor landing conditions created by high mountain winds. Instead of flying into town, I arrived in Munich and took two trains into the city (strike 2). It was a mildly grueling journey after a transatlantic flight and I was wondering why I was doing this at all.
Then I saw the snowy Alps appear in the train window. I had arrived in Innsbruck.
Ok, fine. It's freaking gorgeous. Like, "Where the hell am I and how is this even possible?" gorgeous. Why had I never come here before? My mind was exploding with rhetorical questions.
I mean, come on. This is kind of ridiculous.
My sister's house towering over Innsbruck
Now that I've been here for a week and the Alps constantly looming in my peripheral vision no longer produce a guttural exclamation of awe, I am ready to talk about the experience of being stuck in the middle of a Middle Europe fantasia, not far from Mark Twain's description: "Austria was far from the world, and asleep, and our village was in the middle of that sleep, being in the middle of Austria.”
Well, not that sleepy anymore — Innsbruck has the distinction of having hosted four Winter Olympics in the last few decades. It has a large university (where my sister is teaching Behavioral Economics) and a few very good coffeeshops (my mark of a good town). It also has Zaha Hadid-designed funicular stations and cable cars ascending to a spectacular mountain peak that is a major skiing hub. I braved my first skiing lesson by the end of which I had mastered the bunny slope.
It is no surprise that I always travel with a camera. A small mirrorless Nikon Z6, which if you read my newsletter, you have caught me praising on numerous occasions (no, I'm not getting paid for that). Small, quaint cities are usually not my thing, and neither are landscapes, but there is something about this part of Austria that made me immediately trigger happy. Oh right, because it's freaking gorgeous. But I also hadn't been out of the country since the start of the pandemic in 2020. Finding myself in the middle of a hard-to-get-to-snowy paradise in Europe felt immediately and inexplicably like coming home. Even though I spent my whole adult life in NYC and my early childhood in Soviet Ukraine (hardly Europe), I somehow, maybe aspirationally so, consider myself more European than American.
Here are my favorite things so far around Tyrol.
Everyone speaks German. I am in the peculiar minority of people who loves the sound of the German language. That part in Roxy Music's gorgeous "Bitter Sweet" where Bryan Ferry schizophrenically breaks down into German cabaret singing, "Nein, das ist nicht Das ende der welt" gives me goosebumps.
Olympiabad Spa in neighboring Seefeld. A gigantic, three-level spa complex with all kinds of saunas, steam rooms, outdoor/indoor/hot/icy pools, and all of it is all nude and all together. It was my first time in that kind of environment and it was slightly weird for about five minutes. Being surrounded by men and women of all ages, completely nude and completely relaxed, felt incredibly freeing. No fidgeting with the bathing suit, no sense of false modesty, no care in the world. I came out feeling the last two years of the pandemic melt away into the immaculate Tyrolian snow. It was beautiful.
Merano, Italy. The South Tyrol region encompasses part of Northern Italy, a bilingual region of German and Italian speakers, once part of Austria, then given away to Italy after World War I. The double identity is visible everywhere. The landscape of the city is perceptibly different from Innsbruck; sidewalks peppered with charming cafes, people enjoying seemingly endless aperitifs in the middle of a workday, Italian spoken by one waiter and German by another, both schnitzel and homemade pasta on the menu. One thing the cities have in common, though, are the Alps towering at the end of every obscenely picturesque street. At this point, it is getting almost too scenic.
Highways. To get out of NYC we have to take I-95 or NJ Turnpike, arguably the ugliest highways in the whole of America passing through Ikeas, Home Depots and industrial refineries boasting an apocalyptic aesthetic of hell. Tyrol's highways look like this.
The end of Covid. Ok, that one is a bit facetious. Just a couple of months ago Austria made the news for its stringent Covid measures — shutting down the country for three weeks in December and making it illegal for its citizens not to be vaccinated. I was nervous there would be an aura of doom and gloom, but the reality was nothing like I expected. Other than diligently checking vaccine cards inside restaurants and wearing masks inside closed spaces, the atmosphere is of a world restored to some version of normal. Sitting in an outdoor cafe in Seefeld, glühwein in hand, tanning in the Alpine sun, it's easy to forget, at least for the moment, that the pandemic was ever here.
Auf Wiedersehen!
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Glad you liked Innsbruck.